Searching for a stranger to take care of one of the most important people in your life is a daunting task to say the least. When my wife was preparing to return to work, we set out to find the perfect nanny to take care of our daughter. For multiple reasons we decided that a daycare center or an in their home care provider were not options we wanted. It was important for us to have flexibility with our care and to keep our daughter in her own environment so we decided spending a little more money for personalized care was worth the investment.
As working professionals, we embrace the internet's time saving tools for finding people and networking; we met on Match.com so we figured why not find our Nanny online too? I set out to find the best site and after some research decided to get one month membership on Care.com. This is a decision I would make again and again in the future! After writing a posting and opening the position for people to apply we received in excess of 50 interested applicants. Here is where things got interesting...
My wife had placed her trust in me to search and find the best people so we could personally interview each candidate as a team. Once I had narrowed the applicants down to about ten we started doing the interviews. We ended up meeting seven women over a three day period. This is where I got myself in a little trouble. Remember the episode of "Friends" where Ross and Rachel hire the Hot Nanny? Well I somehow found myself in the unenviable position of Ross dealing with attractive women interviewing to work in my home taking care of my daughter.
On the first day of interviews the applicants got more attractive as each entered our home. After the third hot 20-something potential nanny left the interview I pre-empted the possibility of my wife thinking I had used physical attractiveness as a criteria in selecting our child's care taker. Rose took it in stride and thought my tap dancing was rather funny. The second and third day went much the same with several attractive applicants coming to our home. Good thing my wife and I have a healthy marriage with a lot of humor! I even joked with her that instead of using Match.com I should have searched for my wife on Care.com... A little creepy yes, but resourceful nonetheless.
We ended up having a difficult decision to make since many of the applicants had great experience and references. After a lot of deliberation we decided to use our intuition and gut feeling to choose our new Nanny. We ultimately decided our number one criteria was comfort with the person and alignment with our values. We couldn't be more happy with our decision! Our Nanny (keeping her name out of this for obvious reasons) is perfect for Charlotte who lights up each morning when she walks in the door. They truly are best friends and after the first week Nanny even forgot about being paid joking "I have so much fun here I have to remind myself this is work."
Now lets talk honestly. As I think any good parent would do, we decided to look into the background of our Nanny prior to hiring her. Google and Facebook are the perfect places to start. Once we had made our decision to hire Nanny we searched for anything online about her and realized that not only had we hired an accomplished student at a local college in Child and Family Development but she was also winner of multiple SOCAL pageants and had done very well in the recent Miss California competition. Yes, I was Ross who had gone and hired a "hot nanny!"
To me though, Nanny is my daughter's perfect caretaker and has become a special member of the family we hope to know for many years. We are very fortunate to have a person we trust so completely with out daughter. Having Nanny at home allowed Rose to head back to work with as little stress and guilt as possible and knowing Charlotte is in good hands allows both Rose and I to be the best at work we can be; an amazing blessing for working parents! Thanks Nanny!
